You seem to lack experience with electric vehicles, so let me enlighten you. I have driven a Leaf 12 000 miles the last year and know a thing or two:

Most EV owners will use these stations very rarely. Charging is usually done at night or at work when the vehicle is parked anyway. Any ordinary electrical outlet will supply enough energy in 8 hours for a lot of driving. Assuming 230V/10A 8 hours will give 230*10*8*0.9 ~= 16 kWh of energy (90 % charging efficiency) This is enough for at least 80 km, possibly more than 100 km, depending on roads and driving style. Most places, at least in my country, 16A is available most places which would add 60 % to the above figures.

Quick charging is only ever used if you want to go much farther than usual, which should happen rarely. Few people will buy an EV if the daily commute cannot be done on a single charge, possibly charging in both ends. Luckily, most people commute much shorter than the range of current EVs and with this quick charger network, they can cover longer distances when needed, albeit spending some time charging. Thus this network can service a lot more than 8000 cars. It will be interesting to see if this will result in mass adoption of EVs in Estonia. The infrastructure is certainly there, but I fear EVs are still a tad too expensive for a population that isn't too rich generally.

I see no reason for heating to be less energy intensive than cooling.

I can. An electric heater can be nearly 100% efficient. An air conditioner isn't going to be anywhere near that.

You are quite right. It is more than 100 % efficient since it uses a heat pump. It takes less than 1kWh of energy from the battery to remove 1 kWh of heat from the car. Tesla uses a heat pump for heating too, so it's also more than 100 % efficient, by the way.

Who said anything about stealing? Just ask! Offer to pay! I have had to do that a couple of times and have never been turned down. Then, I live in Norway, perhaps people are nicer here than in the US?

Add up to two hours, most likely less. At an average speed of 64 mph the range should be about 275 miles. Two 45 mins charges at a Supercharger should add enough range, provided there are Superchargers available. Three charges of 30 mins would be better though as the charging power falls with higher charge levels. Add an extra 30 mins somewhere if you want higher margins. You could (and should!) spend some of this time eating anyway which you do while the car charges. Charging is not like filling up a gas car. It has to be done more often and it takes more time, but you can leave the vehicle and do other things while it charges. You will not have to spend two hours watching the car. Best example here is overnight charging at home which is quite slow, but most people need sleep anyway so it is irrelevant.

Whether this is acceptable or not is up to you to decide. If "regularly" means "a lot" or even "primary use of the car" it may not be. And if there are no Superchargers along the way, that trip would require at least two days, possibly more, depending on what outlets you can use.

I talk about the risk of being stranded, not how to solve the problem when it happens. Even then, there are more possibilities than you are aware of. Look at this: http://news.aaa-calif.com/pr/aaa/PRN-first-electric-vehicle-charging-232337.aspx My point is that it is a lot harder to experience an unexpected stop in an EV than in a gas car since the EV tracks the remaining range more accurately and gives out a lot of warnings. Electricity is also more widely available than gas. Electric outlets are everywhere, gas pumps aren't. Even if you drive it until you hit "turtle mode" (or whatever it is called in a Tesla, I have a Leaf), you would most places be within range of an outlet.

Broder knew very well that he would not reach his destination and he left anyway just to make a "better" story. If he wanted to make a case against EVs he could have focused on having to stay 10 mins longer than he wanted at the last Supercharger. Or he he could have insisted of driving somewhere where there are no Superchargers. These are the real drawbacks of an EV today.

My family has driven a Leaf as our only car for the past year and we know very well how it behaves. We have never feared being stranded anywhere or having the car unexpectedly stop. However we do have to spend more time charging on longer trips than we would have wanted ideally.

Broder deliberately charged it less than he needed. When he left the last charging station the car very clearly stated that it would not be able to reach the destination. This is not "non-optimal user behavior", but a complete driver failure, except that it almost certainly was intentional to make a "good" story. An ICE car would behave in the exact same way. This is not specific to EVs.

An EV generally gives a lot more warnings before it runs out of charge than an ICE car does before it runs out of gas. You are no more at risk of being stranded with an EV than with an ICE car and probably less. If he wanted to make a legitimate case against EVs he should criticize the charging times instead.

The warranty is 8 years. The lifetime is a lot more, probably 15 years at least. It all depends on how much capacity loss you can tolerate. Even at 50 % of original capacity this car would be useful to a lot of people and the battery would most likely need decades to reach that state.

Install HVDC lines and the losses aren't that big, 3%/1000 km according to Wikipedia. PV panels don't need to be installed in the wilderness. Cover parking lots instead. Addition of a roof will not impact the local environment any more than covering the ground with asphalt did. Space is not a problem for PV, price is.

Technically, you left the recession in 2009 as the GDP growth has been positive since Q3 '09, but a very quick look at the world economy makes it obvious that you are not out of the woods.Most likely the stimulus spending in the US is what got you out of the recession early. Cut spending too soon and see the economy tank again. Remember, the debt was not in itself the direct reason Greece is in big trouble, it's that investors lost confidence in the Greeks' ability to pay it back. Tank the economy AND combine it with a debt that is too large (again - in the long run) to really watch things go down the drain.

This is not a small, private economy. For an individual it makes perfect sense to cut spending if the debt gets too high. For an entire country it is difficult to do that without destroying the nation's ability to pay on the debt it already has. Here is a car analogy: If your personal debt feels too high, it is NOT a good idea to sell the car to repay some debt and save on gas if that means you cannot go to work.

Greece is doing exactly what the Republicans want you to do, cut spending in the middle of a recession (inherited from Bush). Of course the deficit needs to be reduced - in the long run. Now is not the time to do it. People are still willing to lend the US money at cheap rates. Use them to get the economy going, then cut spending and/or increase taxes. I wish more people understood that running the economy of an entire country is very different from running their private economy.

For many people 100 miles is enough. It is for me and a quick charge is 30 minutes when I need to go longer. And I'm not alone: More than 5% of all new cars in Norway in September were electric. Vehicles with three times the range are available and they will most likely be a lot cheaper in a few years.

Everything other than the battery is either a lot simpler and will last longer than a car with an ICE (like the engine or the transmission) or it is the same. As far as I know, 10 year old Priuses are doing very well. Modern car batteries are not particularly toxic (no heavy metals) and they are too valuble to not recycle anyway.

Norway strangely has the World's best incentives for EVs. There is almost no road tax, no sales tax (which is ridiculously high on other vehicles), free parking many places, no paying at toll roads and you can drive in the bus lane. I think we are trying to make up for our guilty conscience for getting filthy rich on oil.

I'm a Norwegian and I drive a Nissan Leaf, partly because it's very economical and partly because it is best for the environment. Almost all power in Norway is hydro-electric. I think it is better anyway since it shifts pollution to centralised power plants which are easier to replace or clean up in the future.

You could possibly make a case for Norway due to the oil, but there is absolutely no oil in Sweden or Iceland and the latter has handled the economic problems without imploding.

I wish more Americans could realize that a social security net is actually beneficial in a capitalist society, since it enables entrepreneurs to try to start their own business without jeopardizing their children's education or the family's health. Start a small company and you don't have to worry about health insurance for your workers. They have the same good coverage as anyone else. And insurance against unemployment, illness, permanent disability...

Since you play the size card: Organize at the state level. 28 states have a smaller population than Norway, and only 10 states have a larger population than Sweden. All of them are significantly smaller than fairly well-functioning Germany.

One last thing: Why on Earth do you allow such socialist interference in private business as government-mandated minimum wages? That would be unheard of, at least in Norway.

No. Gas usage is very uncommon in Norway. We just sell it and use electricity ourselves. The police has confirmed it is a bomb. At least two people are killed.